'A great day': Tier lands $500M 'Hunger Games' prize

Elated Regional Economic Development Council members discuss how a $500 million Upstate Revitalization Initiative will improve the Southern Tier Thursday at the Elmira Corning Regional Airport.
KELLY GAMPEL / Staff Video

Region one of three top winnners in competition for state economic-development funding

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Binghamton University President Harvey Stenger during a news conference Thursday at the university.(Photo: ANDREW THAYER / Staff Photo)Buy Photo

The Southern Tier was named by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday as one of three regions to share in $1.5 billion in state support. The $500 million, distributed in $100 million increments over five years, represents the largest infusion of economic development aid ever granted the Southern Tier.

Regional leaders expect the cash to transform the economy in the eight-county area and reverse a long economic slide that has led to an outflow of people from the region as they seek new opportunities in the South and other regions with more economic vitality.

The $500 million decision was delivered before a standing-room-only crowd in the 980-capacity Kitty Carlisle Hart Theatre in The Egg performing-arts complex in Albany. It marked the conclusion of the annual regional council competition and the one-time $1.5 billion Upstate Revitalization Initiative, funded with fines on financial firms. Cuomo termed it the largest public investment in New York economic development since the Erie Canal.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo poses with representatives of the Southern Tier Regional Economic Development Council during an economic development awards ceremony on Thursday in Albany.(Photo: AP)

“I think this is the jump-start the Southern Tier needs to really begin to turn the economy around,” said Southern Tier Regional Economic Development Council co-chairman Tom Tranter, president of Corning Enterprises, which is Corning Inc.'s economic-development arm.

In the last year alone, the Tier lost 3,100 private sector jobs, a little over 1 percent of the total, among the largest losses of any area in the state even in the face of a larger national economic expansion. Every county in the region, with the exception of Schuyler and Chenango, lost private-sector jobs over the past year.

If fully carried out, the council estimates, the region’s plan would leverage $2.5 billion in private investment from companies and not-for-profit organizations, creating 10,200 jobs and producing an overall economic impact of $3.4 billion in five years.

Among examples of projects: $2 million for 48 Corliss Ave. in Johnson City toward the Southern Tier Health Sciences and Technology Innovation Park bringing together nursing and pharmacy school, SUNY Broome Community College, Wilson and Lourdes hospitals; $600,000 toward health care laundry company Bates Troy's 12,000-square-foot expansion, $600,000 toward a dry room to test battery technology at Binghamton University; $3.45 million for 7 Hawley Street redevelopment in downtown Binghamton; $1.5 million for Leatherstocking Gas to build an 18-mile gas line to serve Raymond Corp. in Greene, and $500,000 toward Raymond's Center of Excellence in Chenango County; $1 million for Upstate Shredding expansion in Owego; and $2 million for the Waverly village wastewater treatment plant.

Also listed: $1.5 million for improvements at Arnot Ogden Medical Center in Elmira; $400,000 for expansion of Cameron Manufacturing Design; $1.5 million for the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine to build a downtown Elmira campus; $1.3 million for expansion at Anchor Glass in Elmira; $1.8 million to help DeMet's Candy expand; $120,000 for Envision Elmira to redevelop the Werdenberg Building; $3.5 million for Corning Community College and Guthrie Hospital to redevelop the former Corning Hospital into a living and education center; and $350,000 for the Keuka Lake waterfront revitalization in Urbana, Steuben County.

In Tompkins County, some larger projects are $1 million for Ithaca to move the city's Collegetown fire station and free up land for development; $500,000 for Finger Lakes Reuse to expand; $375,000 for Incodema 3D in Freeville to add equipment to expand to prototyping aerospace parts; and $175,000 for Ithaca Beer to expand its canning line.

Under the contest rules, other sources of money must match the URI grants. That can include private investment and company equity or federal programs. Some projects can be funded only with URI money, but a region had to average out a five-to-one match of other sources to URI, Tranter said.

To Tranter and his co-chairman, Binghamton University President Harvey Stenger, as important as the money was pulling together a disparate region to figure out how to improve its economy.

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Southern Tier reaction to $500M Award

“You’ve got to have a good plan,” Stenger said afterward. “The money can come from a lot of different directions but then if you don’t have a plan you won’t really know where to invest it.”

Political leaders largely said it's a cause to end pessimism about the region's economic future.

State Sen. Tom O’Mara, R-Elmira, was in Albany on Thursday and noted that the other two URI winners are next door: the Rochester-based Finger Lakes region, also including Seneca County, and Central New York region, which centers on Syracuse and includes Cortland County. His district is mostly in the Southern Tier but touches on Yates County in the Finger Lakes region.

“With these three regions being adjacent to each other, I think it’s really going to magnify the effects of what these winners get,” he said.

Thursday’s news came a year to the week that the state announced it would not allow high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing for natural gas exploration and denied Tioga Downs, of Nichols, the chance to become a full casino, though that decision was later reversed. Taken together, the decisions were seen as a major blow to the region's economic hopes. It could be the region was owed help afterward, O’Mara offered, and he said New York still needs to reduce the costs of doing business. But he did not dwell on that on Thursday, and instead praised Cuomo for the initiative.

“I’ve been critical of the governor and his action on some of these things," he said. "And today I thank the governor for putting some real meat behind recognizing that the Southern Tier struggles, and this, one-hundred million dollars for five years in a row with a five-to-one match, is a huge amount of investment for the Southern Tier region.”

Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo, D-Endwell, stridently said the Tier won strictly on its merits. A member of a review panel of regional proposals, she said other members were impressed by the Southern Tier’s thorough application.

"I was in the room when these proposals were assessed. To a person, they were really impressed with the Southern Tier, and they won this on the merits,” Lupardo said. “There was no handicapping. No one in that room felt that the Southern Tier deserved this because of various losses they experienced. They put together an extremely solid plan that merited this win.”

Not all politicians fully hailed the news. Assemblyman Christopher Friend, R-Big Flats, noted the money doesn't address major infrastructure needs or reduce localities' costs such as for Medicaid.

"Those issues don't get the red-carpet glitz and glamour that the upstate ‘Hunger Games’ commands," he said. "Albany remains committed to short-term solutions accompanied by pats on the back instead of working for the small businesses on Main Street and middle-class families that are being driven from the state in droves."

Thursday's announcement at Albany's Empire State Plaza was a show as much as an economic news event.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during an economic development awards ceremony on Thursday in Albany.(Photo: AP)

Cuomo took the stage with Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, of Long Island, and Assembly Majority Leader Joseph Morrelle, of Rochester, who stood in for Speaker Carl Heastie, who was out of the country. The mistress of ceremony who actually announced the awards was Kirstin Cole, anchorwoman for WPIX-TV of New York City.

Videos played describing each region's plan, and Cuomo gave a brief lecture on the state's political economy: Politics tilt toward the population downstate, but the state couldn't subsidize insolvent local governments upstate, so it had to help communities become economically self-sufficient by planning for themselves. "You're going to get $500 million for future projects, and you can plan for future projects," he told the audience of hopeful regions.

As the awards were announced, each region's contingent took the stage, with handshakes and hugs all around, sometimes between political rivals. Regional council delegations gathered in a conference room outside the auditorium to offer their spin or take on the results. Losing regions pointed out they still got annual funding from Albany in smaller but still-significant amounts.

In the hours after the announcement, other Tier lawmakers and leaders issued statements expressing their pleasure at the news. Separate news conferences were held in Binghamton and at the Elmira-Corning area later in the day.

In a room near the entrance of Binghamton University’s Events Center, people swapped congratulatory handshakes and friendly pats on the back. Stenger, surrounded by a handful of Broome County government officials, joked that he had listened to “We Are the Champions” for the entire two-and-a-half hour drive back from Albany.

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Binghamton University President Harvey Stenger speaks to the media after it was announced the Southern Tier will receive $500 million in state funding.(Photo: ANDREW THAYER / Staff Photo)

“It’s a great day for the Southern Tier,” Stenger said.

“A lot of people have said, ‘Is this the way to distribute public money?’ And I think that that’s a fair question," Stenger said. "And I completely agree with Governor Cuomo that this is the right way to do it. If we just took the $500 million and spread it across the 600,000 residents of the Southern Tier, everybody would probably get about a cup of coffee a day, after taxes. So really, by taking this $500 million and investing it strategically and making a promise that will leverage that $500 million with $2.5 billion of private funds, and on top of that pledging to grow and add 10,200 jobs over the next five years is something you could not have done just by giving a tax rebate across the state.”

Binghamton Mayor Richard David took note of the plans for his city, the largest urban center in the region.

“This money and the projects that we have lined up will literally transform the landscape of the entire City of Binghamton," he said. "It will create jobs, it will leverage private investment. Binghamton five, 10 years will be completely different than the Binghamton we have today.”

Meanwhile, Tranter, arrived from Albany and joined elected officials at the Elmira Corning Regional Airport.

“I really believe this is transformational for our eight-county region and the Southern Tier," he said. "This will make a huge difference. We had a number of really good projects, all of which were funded. The great thing is we won’t have to go through this process every year. Businesses can come in with projects and we can approve those and get them on their way.”

Chemung County Executive Tom Santulli joined Tranter.

"I was pleasantly surprised," Santulli said. "I think we’ve been handed the greatest opportunity to change the fabric of this region. If we don’t do it, there is nobody to blame but ourselves. We’ve been given the tools. We have to do the planning. What we want to do with this money is get our young people back, keep them from leaving and bring some momentum into this area.”

Other reaction:

"The Southern Tier Regional Council worked hard and put forth the best plan in the state," said 52nd District Sen. Fred Akshar, who sat in on the event. "It really paid off. I appreciate Governor Cuomo recognizing the Southern Tier's needs for jobs, opportunity and economic growth. It's incumbent upon government to create an environment with opportunities for people and businesses to thrive in our communities. Although I wasn't involved in the process this year, I look forward to working hard with local leaders to help see these projects through to fruition."

"This is a great day in the Southern Tier, and we want to thank our team for an outstanding application as well as the committee and the governor for recognizing the need for this funding in our community,” Broome County Executive Debbie Preston said. “New York state is wisely reinvesting in the Southern Tier, and we have several projects that will not only bring jobs, but will bring real development and opportunity to our community.”

“This massive investment in the Southern Tier will have ripple effects for decades and will be a primary catalyst to jump-start our local economy," Binghamton Mayor Richard David said. "I’d like to thank Governor Cuomo for his recognition that the Southern Tier deserved these funds, and that our plan to create jobs was dynamic and transformative. Each time I’ve spoken to Governor Cuomo about the Southern Tier economic struggles or a specific project in the City of Binghamton, he has assured me and that he would be there to help when the time came. Today, Governor Cuomo solidified his commitment to the region, and I thank him for his support. Binghamton’s projects will help lead the way in transforming our region.”

“We are thrilled and incredibly excited to be named as a winner in the Upstate Revitalization Initiative competition," said Kevin McLaughlin, executive director, The Agency Broome County IDA/LDC and member of the Southern Tier Regional Economic Development Council. "We felt confident that we had developed a strong plan because of the countless collaborative discussions throughout the region. Our plan will build upon our strengths in advanced manufacturing and agriculture, and will infuse significant investment in Broome County’s urban core. With this award, we are going to bring about transformative change to the physical and economic landscape in our region. This award marks the beginning of a new era in the Southern Tier, and we can’t wait to get started.”

“I think it’s a great honor that they picked us," said Johnson City Mayor Greg Deemie. "I want to thank the whole committee and everybody who put their heart and soul into this thing to make it happen … and also those in Albany who saw the possibilities here in … the Southern Tier region … It’s a great help for us to move into the future.”

Watch the video shown during the awards announcement highlighting the Southern Tier's Plan

Thursday’s decision by the Cuomo administration follows some nine months of planning by the Southern Tier Regional Economic Development Council and their counterparts in seven other regions, with those in New York City and Buffalo ineligible for the special one-time upstate initiative. Each submitted proposals laying out why they need economic aid and what they’d do with it, to varying degrees of specificity.

Because the URI contest pits regions against one another, the it's sometimes called the upstate Hunger Games, after the popular movies about fights to the death among youths in a dystopian future society. Some critics say the money would be better spent improving public infrastructure or lowering taxes. The Cuomo administration has defended the process as putting more decision making in the hands of local people and encouraging them to examine regional problems and strategies.

In addition, the state on Thursday announced tens of millions in separate funding to each region, even the three URI prize winners, in annual grants from state sources and federal aid funneled through Albany through the consolidated funding application process, CFA. Cuomo also pledged to ask the Legislature to add more money in 2016 for the four regions that didn't win a URI five-year package.

Awards by region

Economic development awards to New York regional economic development regions. List includes counties within the region and major communities.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during an economic development awards ceremony on Thursday in Albany. The Finger Lakes, the Southern Tier and central New York have each won $500 million in state funds as part of Gov. Cuomo's upstate economic development competition.(Photo: AP)